More than 15 years after Bartolo Velador was stabbed to death in an Escondido parking lot, the man convicted of repeatedly plunging the knife into him learned his fate Friday: 26 years to life in prison.

Hector Mendieta fled the country after the fall 2002 attack in an Escondido bar parking lot. Eventually, authorities located him in Mexico — his postings on Facebook helped nail down his location.

Mendieta was arrested there and extradited to San Diego in 2016. Last fall, a North County jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.

“We’re just glad that he was found and that he serves the rest of his life in prison,” the victim’s older brother, Ignacio Velador, told the judge during Mendieta’s sentencing hearing at the Vista courthouse.

He paused a moment, then said: “I miss my little brother.”

According to authorities, 35-year-old Bartolo Velador and Mendieta had an altercation outside Dee’s Sports Tavern about 12:50 a.m. on Sept. 10, 2002. As Velador tried to run, Mendieta, then 21, pulled out a large knife and followed him, stabbing him over and over in the parking lot.

When Velador went down, Mendieta and a second man kicked his head, then fled.

“He left him to die in a parking lot,” Deputy District Attorney Laurie Hauf told the judge.

Asked by the judge if he wanted to say anything, Mendieta, now 36, hung his head. “Only that I am sorry,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter.

According to a court filing, in the years that followed the killing, Mendieta worked as an auto mechanic and had two children with a woman in Mexico. Escondido police and the U.S. Marshals San Diego Fugitive Task Force arrested him in June 2016.